SCIENCE journalists like to think that news is their m茅tier, for what
could be newer than the latest discovery? But I can鈥檛 help noticing that, just
like flu epidemics, troublesome old stories return to haunt us.
Take the report published in Britain last month by the Royal College of
Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. It warned that the number of women having
multiple births after fertility treatment is unacceptably high. Now where have I
heard that before?
Exactly a decade ago, 快猫短视频 highlighted the startling outcome of
promising new fertility treatments. Women who took these routes to motherhood
were sometimes ending up with triplets or more. It sounded like a
bonus鈥攖hree babies for the price of one鈥攂ut having triplets, let
alone quads or quins, is no joke (see 快猫短视频 18 August 1990, p 29). These
babies turn out to be at far greater risk of suffering cerebral palsy and other
diseases, while families are stretched to breaking point. It is impossible for
one person alone to look after three babies for any length of time. Mothers of
triplets were exhausted, often trapped in their homes and dependent on
volunteers or help from their parents or neighbours. Paediatricians, GPs, health
visitors and teachers were all struggling to pick up the pieces.
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These fertility treatments were turning reproduction into Russian roulette.
In the simplest case, women were given fertility drugs that stimulated their
ovaries to release more than the normal single egg each month and were told to
have sex at the prime time. In the more high-tech 鈥淕IFT鈥� approach, the drug
treatments were followed by trips to a fertility clinic where sperm mixed with
perhaps a dozen eggs would be popped into her fallopian tube. The third option
was IVF, where doctors routinely transferred at least three, and maybe more,
embryos into their patients鈥� wombs. Would-be mothers emerged beaming at the
thought that their chances of establishing a successful pregnancy were now much
greater.
But this blunderbuss approach meant that they also ran the risk of giving
birth to two, three or even four children. The rate of multiple births has
increased to 14.4 per 1000 births in 1998, compared with 11.6 in 1990.
So does the report say anything new? Well, it calls for the IVF embryo limit
to be set at two鈥攁 move that many commentators strongly advocated more
than a decade ago. Will the lumbering dinosaur of medical practice take note
this time?
I doubt it. Few institutions reform themselves voluntarily, and somehow the
triplet predicament has never really captured the headlines. After all, babies
are something to celebrate, aren鈥檛 they?
So the lack of public concern has meant that people seeking children through
IVF continue to risk having multiple births without really understanding the
implications. And without consumer pressure for a restriction on embryo numbers,
it鈥檚 business as usual.
No wonder journalists suffer from repetitive strain injury鈥攐f the
spirit perhaps more than the wrist.